GIRL Quixotic
by Raven's Wing
Summary: Every breath she draws is rhapsody. He needs her to breathe. AU modern , Flynn/Rapunzel
1. prologue

**Disclaimer**: I own nothing related to the Tangled universe including, but not limited to, characters, names of places, lyrics, dialogue, or any other piece of product. Disney retains all the rights to this universe. I am making no money or receiving any kind of compensation, material or non-material, for this fiction. It's all for fun. Please don't sue me. I do claim the writing, the idea behind this particular narrative, and any peripheral characters or locations created to augment Disney's work.

* * *

**A/N**: This is a little different than most fan fictions on this site. I've written this format for other fan fiction universes, but this is my first _Tangled_ attempt. This is a poem I wrote and broke into sections. In each chapter following this I will expand on the sections. I hope you enjoy it. For news on updates, make sure you check out my twitter: **ravenswrite**

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**GIRL Quixotic  
**_((every_ _breath she draws is rhapsody))  
((he needs her to breathe))_

* * *

[prologue]

i.)  
she is a rainbow  
all bending color && whim(sea)  
unsure where she starts  
not caring where she ends  
she hides (her treasure)

ii.)  
he is a shadow  
disappearing in darkness  
attached  
(un)noticed  
false words a cloak  
his world is backwards

iii.)  
bed time stories && nursery rhymes  
wishes are  
h.o.r.s.e.s  
mirror[rorrim] image meanings  
she cannot break out  
of _this _  
looking  
glass  
world

iv.)  
w**h**irling d**er**vish  
t**sun**ami force  
**sh**e forces h**i**m  
ha**n**d (ov**e**r)  
fi**s**t  
"what good is a loveless life?"  
"good enough."

v.)  
s|h|a|t|t|e|r|e|d windows  
falling  
**d  
o  
w  
n**  
_d  
o  
w  
n_  
UP  
superstition sticks to her teeth  
how tall is the sky?  
so much is out of reach

vi.)  
he is her **w**is**h** (cr**a**f**t**)  
**she** maps **s**tars in his **e**y**es**  
draws prom**is**es from his skies  
**h**e makes rules (to break them)  
"th**i**ngs are **m**ost interesting  
when they fall a|p|a|r|t."

vii.)  
"I used to drown in gold."  
hemorrhaging memories  
jagged edges  
there is no: (stop, rest, home)

viii.)  
she obsesses over _infection_  
what it feels like to be (inside) someone  
to feed on blood && bones  
he does not explain  
she should know  
she is killing him

ix.)  
he calls them truths  
u|n|f|o|l|d|e|d  
like a poor man's love letters  
mercurial moments  
she gets cut on his edges

x.)  
she dreams dragons && death  
her lips too ripe to keep a secret  
chameleon moods a labyrinth  
he has lost his: (mind, way, heart)

xi.)  
**h**er tumult is **a** bewi**t**ched burd**e**n  
wit**h** gossamer w**i**ngs  
and sharp SHARP teeth**  
**daughter of Demeter  
pomegranate** l**aced prom**i**s**es  
**love is HELL

xii.)  
his skin peels off  
his heart an empty page  
a prayer  
an elegy  
a scarlet rope from a window  
hope is a 4our letter word


	2. i

**Disclaimer**: I own nothing related to the Tangled universe including, but not limited to, characters, names of places, lyrics, dialogue, or any other piece of product. Disney retains all the rights to this universe. I am making no money or receiving any kind of compensation, material or non-material, for this fiction. It's all for fun. Please don't sue me. I do claim the writing, the idea behind this particular narrative, and any peripheral characters or locations I created to augment Disney's work.

* * *

i.)  
she is a rainbow  
all bending color && whim(sea)  
unsure where she starts  
not caring where she ends  
she hides (her treasure)

Men don't write songs for GIRL Quixotic, they write elegies (there is something too tragic in her eyes for music). This is the first thing BOY Clandestine notices about her after the fact that she doesn't lock her windows (she's always wide open).

He hoped for something (someone) easy (fast cash before a faster fuck) and he gets everything but (she gives him what he needs not what he wants). His feet touch the floor (that's never been enough to ground him) but that is as far as he gets (she always stops him in his tracks).

BOY Clandestine cannot breathe under the tidal wave of her tragedy (he will drown in her someday).

GIRL Quixotic breathes color and light and fire (she burns _so_ brightly). Darkness has no hold on her (she lights up every room). Luminescent skin is a sinful canvas for a story he'll never understand (how he wants to understand). Each line and curve will become their pattern (she with all on display and him desperate to make sense of it). She is not a child (even if she sits like one) but he swears she could fit in his pocket (he would carry her for luck). Glass green eyes hide behind hair with angry edges that slash her cheek, her temple (it mocks her perfection like winter mocks the spring).

"Did the Red Queen send you?"

(it's not a riddle, but he doesn't understand)

"I sent me."

He goes where he pleases (nothing pleases him).

"Then you're late. They took everything already."

She stands and spins and spins and spins (she is dizzying) quicksilver arms open gesturing to all that the darkness lacked until the room explodes with her light (she is dazzling). His eyes are prisms (he never knew colors could _hurt_). Radiant pain rains a halo around GIRL Quixotic's head (his personal angel) and he tastes the pulse of her energy against his skin (he doesn't know how soon he'll give anything just to taste _her_).

The room is cavernous and throbbing. The walls seep impossible memories like an open wound (he'll do his best to patch her up). Harlequin colors swim on the floor and climb the walls like ivy (he swears the colors are climbing inside of _him_) but he cannot fathom their meaning.

Caterpillars and suns swim together in a sea of mushrooms and lanterns (reality washes away with her waves). Towers melt into golden tide pools where flowers have faces and teapots are tenements (she can never keep a story straight). There is nothing here but color and light and her (she is the only one who can make him forget himself).

GIRL Quixotic stops spinning and her technicolor symphony fades with her dimming light (Tinkerbell is dying - clap clap clap). Darkness wraps around her like the arms of a stranger, but doesn't dare touch her shimmering skin (it may bruise her – and she does bruise so easily). Impossibly small hands press against her face, her neck, her arms, her legs like she's taking count of all her parts (she always spins a piece loose) and giggles (it tickles to put herself in place). He has seen (too) many things (the night never hid her true face from him) but he's never seen something as entrancing as her hands on her body (he likes a girl who knows her own skin).

"I didn't come to take anything."

A lie. A truth. She makes him change his mind.

"You're no Jabberwock. There is no hate on your lips."

Her voice is the lullaby he never knew he missed and he curves to the caress of her words (he wants to caress her curves).

"And lucky for us – you're just in time for tea."

He couldn't (wouldn't) leave if he tried (he didn't).


	3. ii

**Disclaimer**: I own nothing related to the Tangled universe including, but not limited to, characters, names of places, lyrics, dialogue, or any other piece of product. Disney retains all the rights to this universe. I am making no money or receiving any kind of compensation, material or non-material, for this fiction. It's all for fun. Please don't sue me. I do claim the writing, the idea behind this particular narrative, and any peripheral characters or locations created to augment Disney's work.

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ii.)  
he is a shadow  
disappearing in darkness  
attached  
(un)noticed  
false word a cloak  
his world is backwards

BOY Clandestine makes promises out of air and gives them to GIRL Quixotic (she is easily impressed). Her metallic glint catches his eye (he always could spot the real thing) and he wants to melt her down and wear her like a necklace (he'd keep her close to his heart). He spends the night watching her even if she isn't all there (where the hell she drifts off to in her kaleidoscope mind escapes him) just in case she leaves her treasure out in the open (nothing is so simple with her).

"I leave when the sun comes up." He says with a thick tongue.

BOY Clandestine goes to bed in the morning because the night suits him best (he was raised by darkness) and spending the daylight with someone was too intimate for his blood (but he'd still fuck the daylight out of her if she'd let him).

So she paints a purple door on the wall with an angry swirling sun in the center (the same sun swims on the skin above her navel) and tries to open it over and over (she must find a way to follow him). Red claw marks mar the handle (she is such a bleeding heart) and the tattooed keys on her breakable fingers unlock nothing. He watches the way you watch someone die: entranced, hopeless, angry (he'd kill to understand her).

"I'm not the right size." GIRL Quixotic's back bows, cathedral arch, and she howls to the sky (she painted her own constellations on the ceiling). "I'll never get out of here. I'll never get out of here. Never. Never!"

It is too much (it is never enough) and she BURSTS.

The room blazes to light (the electricity in her veins sets her razor blade hair on end) and her intensity burns his skin (he won't shed his layers - there is too much underneath he isn't ready to see). The world is too bright with her shuddering quaking light and he feels half of himself disappear in her blinding fury (no matter where he looks he cannot find his shadow). When she is like this – GIRL Quixotic is the ground where angels fear to tread (BOY Clandestine is not an angel).

She spends like a goddess until every bulb bursts and candles melt to pools of wax (she'll swim in them later just to feel their burn) and all the golden light under skin pulls back deep into her bones (the glow inside her just bright enough to illuminate the autobiographical brands on her skin). His darkness finds him again in the wake of her storm (and for the first time he is unsure of its necessity).

She staggers across the room (the way she moves is staggering). Bare feet crunch on broken glass but the sharp edges leave her untouched (there is something magic in her blood). BOY Clandestine stares at the tattoo stretching from her shoulder to delicate shoulder, tucked into the shadow of her violin collarbones (she is so tightly strung).

_AT LAST I SEE THE LIGHT _

Each letter glints as he watches her approach and he knows she doesn't understand what it means any more than he does (he is the master of forgetting the uncomfortable). Every phrase and image etched onto the canvas of her skin tells as much as it teases and they both know that these things were her Before, but this is her After (and he has his own story to tell but he keeps his cover closed).

Arabesque arms wrap around him (her bamboo body presses _so close_ to his) and she cries about the Dormouse and other friends who don't visit anymore (she sees things hidden from mere men). GIRL Quixotic is liquid heat seeping into BOY Clandestine (she has a way of getting under his skin) with her body like the sun and he tenses at how easy it would be to have his world revolve around her.

Part of BOY Clandestine feels compelled to wrap his arms around GIRL Quixotic, but his darkness snaps at her effulgence like a monster at a child (not even an eclipse can hold the sun). Instead he stands and breathes in her scent (magnolias, rain, and heartache; strawberries, linen, and holocausts) and pretends he isn't supporting her until the first red rays of the sun hit the chaotic mural of her floor (the sun pales in comparison to how she shines).

"I'm leaving."

His voice all needles and arsenic (he tries to kill the need he feels to stay).

"I'm coming with you."

And he lets her because she opens up the purple, sun-laden door and pulls him along with her (she can do the impossible).


	4. iii

**Disclaimer**: I own nothing related to the Tangled universe including, but not limited to, characters, names of places, lyrics, dialogue, or any other piece of product. Disney retains all the rights to this universe. I am making no money or receiving any kind of compensation, material or non-material, for this fiction. It's all for fun. Please don't sue me. I do claim the writing, the idea behind this particular narrative, and any peripheral characters or locations created to augment Disney's work.

* * *

iii.)  
bed time stories && nursery rhymes  
wishes are  
h.o.r.s.e.s  
mirror[rorrim] image meanings  
she cannot break out  
of _this_  
looking  
glass  
world

This world is brown and bawdy (he likes it because he blends in) but she is all yellow and white (she stands out like the ink bleeding stories on her skin). She is all open windows waiting (just like he found her) and he likes watching her try her best to not be so transparent (it's like trying to watch a window pull its own drapes).

Here the men are monsters (no storybook safety where men have hooks for hands) and they don't appreciate how she hides their shadows with her light but they like the warmth creeping off her small frame (she melts their hearts). She confuses dirt with mystique (what is meant to scare only intrigues) and she loves all the scars she finds (she doesn't have any of her own). BOY Clandestine ignores just how well brown and yellow go together (he envies her shade).

Thumbtacks hold post-its and polaroids to the wall (a polaroid is worth a dozen words). Some hold faces she sees here now (other are not so lucky) and she wonders just where the missing have wandered off to (she knows how tricky the looking glass can be).

"What are these?"

GIRL Quixotic gestures to the paper and celluloid fringed wall and the pieces strain towards her fingertips (she is magnetic).

"Hopes that got lost."

BOY Clandestine does not romanticize (he isn't romantic) but he remembers most of these being written and he knows how they end (he is spoiled).

She reads post-it scrawls like catechisms and treats them with the same reverence as the confessions on her body (she expects everyone to be as honest as she is) but all the words rattle around in her mind (she can't find a phrase that fits). Her locksmith fingers graze edges of vaulted memories (ambition held prisoner) and she sparks at the contact (she feeds off abandoned energy). She takes in everything (she's had everything taken). Her touch lingers on a carved crossbeam reading the etching like braille (she pulls the words into her body).

**WE'RE ALL MAD HERE**

The words stick in her like splinters and cyanide (they work under her skin) and BOY Clandestine watches her crackle beneath the weight of their implications (she doesn't do well with subtext). The jukebox in the corner has been dead for years but fizzles to life when she comes close (she has a way of resurrecting things) and the candles on the counter light voluntarily (she is on fire). He cannot take his eyes off of her (he'd take everything off of her) as she snatches one post-it off the wall (she takes it like it is hers to keep – she takes him the same way).

GIRL Quixotic clutches the curled scrap to her chest (he notices the scorched edges).

"This hope is mine now."

She cannot breathe until the words are emblazoned on her skin (her lips such a pretty shade of blue) and the words claim her as much as she claims them (textbook codependency). She is on a quest (she slays dragons on the way) and she is her own knight in shining armor (she is used to playing all of the parts).

BOY Clandestine collects favors the way most people collect grudges (but he never owes anyone anything) so he knows who to ask when she drowns his resistance with sea glass eyes.

Lamps flicker and surge in the room where testimonies breed on people's bodies (her body's chemistry fights the needle and ink). Her body is spread out on a table beneath the invasive touch of a shriveled old man (bad touch, her skin says, bad touch). BOY Clandestine stays in the wavering shadows (he likes to watch) and counts the way he doesn't need her (the list is getting shorter).

Bones on her back mark intervals for the artist on her already painted canvas (it won't be long before BOY Clandestine leaves his own mark). Agile eyes scan each nuance of the sparking flesh never able to conceal its secrets (she doesn't try) and wonders at the story they would string together if laid out proper (BOY Clandestine would lay her properly).

GIRL Quixotic cries fat tears to fill the room (she's not the right size! never the right size!) but seeks no comfort (she's not used to finding it) and knows she will like what she finds when it's done (peeling back surgical gauze is her present – her past – her future).

The gnome-like man is done (minutes for hours, hours for days) and the tips of his white beard sizzle like burnt feathers (occupational hazard). He shows GIRL Quixotic in a mirror the strange black symbols spilling down her back over railroad-tie ribs (she likes how things look backwards). Each character swims in a crimson halo (the magic in her blood boiling to appraise its newest addition). It sits between the Queen of Hearts and a poem BOY Clandestine didn't recognize, but memorized just like he memorized her the way her delicate wrists fit onto her slender hands:

**JACK LOVED JILL  
BUT TOOK A PILL  
AND HOME WAS NEVER  
THE SAME AGAIN**

(he won't waste wishes trying to understand her)

BOY Clandestine can tell by the liquid lightning in her eyes that she likes her augmentation (the heat of pleasure dries up any tears). GIRL Quixotic had it done in Japanese letters (they look so pretty on her luminous skin) and he steps out of the darkness to get a closer look (like proximity would aid comprehension).

Jagged fingernails on rough fingers drag over the abused flesh like he has the right (she doesn't tell him 'no') and she looks back at him over her shoulder with glass green eyes clear and curious (her skin sparks against his).

"What does it say?"

(Words like thunder to match her lightning)

GIRL Quixotic face shifts and he knows she is gone back to Before while he stands here in her After (he doesn't follow because he isn't ready for her rabbit holes just yet).

"I've got a dream."

(the chill down his spine scares him because it tells him what she said is true)

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**A/N**: Curious about updates or projects I'm working on? **Stalk me on twitter:**_ ravenswrite_


	5. iv

**Disclaimer**: I own nothing related to the Tangled universe including, but not limited to, characters, names of places, lyrics, dialogue, or any other piece of product. Disney retains all the rights to this universe. I am making no money or receiving any kind of compensation, material or non-material, for this fiction. It's all for fun. Please don't sue me. I do claim the writing, the idea behind this particular narrative, and any peripheral characters or locations created to augment Disney's work. The quote in italics is from Lewis Carroll's original work _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland _and is in no way mine and I gain no compensation, material or non-material, by its appearance in my text.

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iv.)  
w**h**irling d**er**vish  
t**sun**ami force  
**sh**e forces h**i**m  
ha**n**d (ov**e**r)  
fi**s**t  
"what good is a loveless life?"  
"good enough."

GIRL Quixotic wishes to control the weather (she is a force of nature) so she makes lightning with her fingers (she always finds a way to shock him) and burns poetry on the walls (she is too tragic for subtlety). Tempest, tidal waves, and tornadoes over turnpikes – she leaves such destruction in her wake (because beauty can be deadly) and BOY Clandestine cannot take his eyes off of her (she is a train wreck in slow motion).

GIRL Quixotic finds the place where BOY Clandestine keeps his shadows and tries to pull her light inside (she is scared of his dark) but even her brilliance struggles in this space of secrets (there is so much that he needs to hide). Their relationship is an intimate dance of what she wants to know versus what he wants to tell her (they both feel like they're winning).

There is not much to see, but everywhere she looks she sees a blank canvas (she plans to leave a mark) and he sees another reason to end this odd charade (he is always playing games). He holds her artistic ambition at bay (her dreams crowd him) and she burns his fingers (you always hurt the one you love).

She is cheshire (floating in and out of this reality) and she promises he only needs to make room for half of her (she is far from complete). He can see the scars that come with letting her stay (like everything with her – they are on the surface) but he lets her anyway (he likes the curve of her neck on his pillow). He draws his curtains and hope she won't let in too much light (she's already seen too much) and wraps her shimmering skin in a shadow (he has darkness to spare).

All of his dark push at her glow to keep it tight beneath her skin (her body trembles under the weight) but what night cannot hide the sun for long (dawn never stops breaking for GIRL Quixotic).

The tattoo scrawled over her heart sears through the darkness (for her: home is where alone is):

**GOTHEL**

The name shreds his shadow even as it smothers her and GIRL Quixotic explodes in pain and fear (it hurts to shine here – his pain hers) and she is _burning _(she'd burn this whole world to the ground if it meant she could forget it all - if he couldn't leave her). He cannot understand (she won't explain) and light pushes out just enough to frame her against the black (the first golden star to shine in his existence). He doesn't ask (she's dying to tell) and her skins crawls with need for contact (it is always just out of reach).

" '_Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'__  
__'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.' __  
__'I don't much care where –'__  
__'Then it doesn't matter which way you go.'_ "

(she recites the words as a comfort – a reassurance – but still she feels so cold in the embrace of his night).

Here. This is where you go.

(he doesn't say – but it is what she hears)

GIRL Quixotic looks at him (she sees straight through his shadows) and she seems smaller today (she is never the right size, never, never).

"What good is a loveless life?"

(a question as much for her as it is for him)

"Good enough."

(he wishes it was)


End file.
